Every business organization generates valuable information or data that is an asset of the firm. With increased number of cyber-attacks and data breaches, companies are now compelled to implement various methods that can help them to safeguard their critical data when in rest or during data transfer over a network. Securing system and data of course begins with identity based controls and it is this identity and access management features that are available in various Microsoft business products that help to protect the data from any unauthorized access by making it available only to the legitimate users.

We all are aware that encryption is the best process to protect data when in transit. It is a process of encoding the data that can only be read by authorized persons. The encrypted data help to protect from hackers and intruders. Microsoft products and services are based on encryption and adopt industry standard transport protocols for more data security. Microsoft goes beyond the password and the username model to offer stronger authentication. Robust tools often make it easy for the administrators to manage the identity. The products also provide a secured infrastructure that ensures protection of crucial data. The encryption techniques, algorithms, protocols can transfer data over a secured path while maintaining the privacy of the data.

Some important Microsoft products and services that can secure apps are data are:

Microsoft Azure: It is an open, flexible, cloud computing platform that is used to develop and manage applications through the network of data centers. It supports a wide range of operating systems, frameworks, tools, programming languages, databases and devices. The encrypted communication processes make Azure responsible for ensuring data protection.

• Azure Active Directory Identity protections offer a consolidated view of the risk event and also the potential vulnerabilities that affect the organizations identities.

• Azure Multi Factor authentication involves the need of more than one method to verify the user for access of any data in app, both in the cloud and on site.

• Azure Active Directory B2C is a global identity management service for apps that scale to hundreds of millions of identities. It can be integrated across web platforms and mobiles.

• Azure Active Directory B2B collaboration is a solution that supports cross company relationships by allowing partners to access corporate applications or data by using their self-managed identities.

• Azure Active Directory Join allows you to extend the cloud capabilities to your Windows 10 devices for centralized management. It makes it easy for the users to connect to the organizational cloud through AAD and makes access easy to resources and apps.

Microsoft Office 365: Office 365 uses the SSL/TLS and AES standards to ensure that the data security and confidentiality is maintained. The main identity models in Office 365 are:

• Cloud identity: Accounts can be managed in Office 365 and no on-premises servers are needed to manage the users.

• Federated identity: You can synchronize on-premises directory objects with Office 365 and manage the users. The passwords can also be synchronized so that the users have the same password for cloud and on-premises.

Microsoft Dynamics 365: Dynamics 365 uses Azure Active Directory to authenticate users and protect against unauthorized access, simplify the management of users and also allows you to assign privileges easily. It uses a role based security system and customers can further customize the security by controlling the user access by setting the access levels and permissions.

Microsoft Power BI:This is Microsoft’s business analytics and it helps the users to create reports with interactive visualizations that are created by business intelligence. It uses the HTTPS protocol to ensure the security of the data through encryption process. To ensure security and protection of data in storage, Power BI encrypts key data like Direct Query datasets, reports and etc.

Visual Studio Team Services: This is a complete software package that enables the team to share and build software codes, track the work and send software across various platforms. It uses Azure Active Directory accounts to perform authorization, authentication and access control. Besides this, it uses Azure Blob to store unstructured data, which makes use of SQL’s transparent data encryption or TDE to protect the data from any malicious activity or thefts.

Each enterprise nowadays has the option to choose from a wide range of open source content management systems. Some of the content management systems are popular, whereas others are lesser-known. However, some of the lesser-known content management systems like Concrete5 come with an array of features to simplify development and management of a variety of websites and web application.

As an open source content management system (CMS), Concrete5 helps users to curtail website development and management cost. At the same time, it simplifies web application development and management by providing several robust features, along with community and enterprise support. These features make many enterprises prefer Concrete5 to other popular content management systems.

Understanding Important Features of Concrte5 CMS

Themes, Add-ons and Extensions

Concrete5 enables web developers to design websites rapidly using a number of free and commercial tools. Likewise, the developers can easily add functionality to the web application using several free and commercial add-ons. The themes and add-ons enable developers to build custom websites rapidly without writing additional code. At the same time, the developers can extend the CMS using enterprise extensions like internationalization, HTML exporter, and multi-step content workflow.

Content Editor

The content editor provided by Concrete5 helps programmers to customize the website according to precise business requirements. The WYSIWYG content editor further enables developers to customize the website without writing or modifying code. It further comes with robust features like in-context editing, easy theme controls, and dynamic forms. The programmers even have option to drag and drop content blocks within a template.

Style Editor

Cocrete5 enables developers to customize website design using a variety of fonts, layouts, colours. The developers can further edit these elements using the style editor provided by the CMS. The style editor further simplifies website customization by providing features like image editor, videos, gallery, blocks, stacks, templates, and page layouts.

Mobile Optimization

Concrete5 allows developers to optimize websites for mobile devices by adopting responsive web design. The developers can further make the web pages look good on varying devices using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Also, they can optimize the web application for mobile devices by availing the features provided by Concrete5 – responsive images, responsive layouts, responsive video, and mobile navigation/menus.

Form Builder

Concrete5 enables users to accelerate digital marketing campaigns by creating form and surveys dynamically. The programmers can use the form builder provided by the CMS to create forms and surveys without writing additional code. The users can further collect user data more efficiently by availing the features provided by the form builder – custom form fields, form validation, error detection and drag-and-drop.

Integrated Reporting Tool

Concrete5 also comes with tools to generate a variety of integrated reports. It allows users to create a variety of reports using a single interface. The website administrators can use the interface to generate reports based on form results, survey results, error logging, user session tracking statistics, and email logging systems. These reports help managers to speedup decision making process and monitor marketing campaigns more efficiently.

Security Features

The security features provided by Concrete5 helps developers to protect the web application from various targeted security attacks. The developers can easily enhance the website’s security by availing features like captcha, email verification, content approval, SSL implementation, audit trial and login history capturing. They also have option to override the default security settings of the CMS without modifying its core architecture.

User Management and Permissions

Concrete5 further enhances the website security by allowing administrators to create multiple user accounts and imposing access restrictions. Based on the policy of his organization, an administrator can create groups, profiles, attributes, exclusions, and custom single pages. Likewise, they can make individual web pages accessible to specific users and groups. Also, they can trigger events based on workflows against saved permissions.

Blogs and Commenting

Concrete5 comes with features to facilitate blog integration and online discussions. The users can easily integrate customizable blogs into their websites by availing features like topics, multiple authors, post display options, and RSS syndication. Likewise, they can use the integrated commenting system provided by Concrete5 to moderate both individual and threaded comments efficiently.

Social Integration and SEO

Concrte5 helps users to divert traffic to their websites from popular search engines and social networks. The users can easily increase the search engine ranking and visibility of their websites by availing an array of SEO features provided by the CMS – XML sitemap, description meta tag, page titles, custom URLs, and bulk SEO page updater. Likewise, they can use the social share plug-in provided by Concrete5 to integrate the website with popular social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

However, Concrete5, like other content management systems, has its own shortcomings. For instance, it increases web application development cost by requiring enterprises to purchase commercial add-ons. The enterprises can still use Concrete5 to build and manage a variety of web applications smoothly.